News Corp/NBC’s Unnamed Video Effort Names Jason Kilar CEO

The "unnamed" video startup from NBC and News Corp now has a CEO. Announced this morning by Peter Chernin and Jeff Zucker, Jason Kilar from Amazon will lead the joint venture based in Los Angeles, CA. Kilar will report to the Board which includes Chernin and Zucker.

The release has a bit of fluff including: The company’s video-rich site will debut later this year with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips from myriad networks and two major film studios and with an unparalleled reach.  With distribution partners AOL, CNET, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo!, the new venture will have access to 98 percent of the monthly U.S. unique users on the Internet.

Interesting that MySpace is launching MySpace TV and YouTube is not listed. Could this help MySpace pick up some steam in it’s battle against YouTube?

From the release:

"Jason’s product and consumer expertise in the world of e-commerce is arguably unrivaled in this business and gives him a great insight into what it takes to create a superior user interface," commented Mr. Chernin.

"We are very pleased to have an executive of Jason’s caliber take the reins of our groundbreaking joint venture. Jason is a proven leader and innovator with a wealth of experience on both the technology and content sides of the equation.  He is the right person to make sure our new initiative offers a consumer experience worthy of remark," said Mr. Zucker.

Liz at NewTeeVee has some additional information on the announcement and Om discusses the startup’s valuation at $1 billion.